262 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

For years, most politicians have lied to people.
They know they are lying, and we know they are lying.
We have tried to calibrate our acceptance…if he, or she say X, they Mean Y, and they will probably accomplish Z.
A lot of our collective misery is when our calibration is off; most frequently recently when folks spout conservative
common sense, then get in bed with the looney left after election.

One could argue that the biggest positive Trump has brought to the table is saying, in plain talk, what he planned to do,
and then, to our amazement, actually trying to keep these campaign promises. We’ve not seen this often before. What we have seen,
is generations of pols flogging, say, the elimination of hunger. Yet somehow, the next campaign, there is just as much hunger remaining to flog the elimination of. Obamacare, for example, upended the system to take care of the uninsured; yet the campaign manifesto this year still seems to find as many uninsured needing government help as before.

The wonder, though, seems to be, that at least some on the left have noticed the positive effect of plain talk, and, assuming it is the method and not the message that got Trump elected, have opted to drop the mask and tell the truth.

Debate is different when facts are debated as opposed to euphemisms.

When “promoting clean energy and saving the planet” becomes “getting ride of planes, cars, and rebuilding every structure in the country, the debate will change.

The left will not like to defend their plain talk, much of which is indefensible. Before long, we’ll see a return to euphemisms. But the “damage may have been done” or “the light of truth has shone upon their hideous plans” depending on your point of view.

“advanced transportation” is good. Lets all build bullet trains like they are doing in California….harder to sell.
“More clean energy like Germany” is good. “Highest rates in the world”. a harder sell.

Like Scrooge in the Christmas Carol; their own words shall be used against them. ‘Who is the surplus population’.

I guess Jeffrey Sachs is not elected to public office but he represents another sort of liar. There may be cognitive dissonance (or something) going on, so he doesn’t realize how far from the truth he gets.Ending child poverty is within reach

The subtitle is: “The rich will have to pay more . . .”

Sachs is one of the reasons we dropped our long running subscription to the magazine Scientific American. Ten years ago he was leading the “Cry Wolf” Kimate Cult. I was looking for a Brexit story regarding Ireland when I found this.

The Jeffrey Sachs of the world write wonderful sob-story op-eds which are determinedly out of touch with reality. They always `overlook’ that the very rich have a `vested interest’ to retain total control of that which makes them rich, and that which keeps them rich: the levers of power. They don’t care how many layers of proxies they have to use to keep Joe and Josephine Public quiet, just as long as they are in control.

Taxes are anathema and are pushed off onto the poorer as fast as they can be. Remember: ` Only the poor pay taxes.‘

You can understand why the lyin’ left hate honest peopke ( especially christians ) because we expose the reality of thier constant lying.

If you had a child who was always lying, youd realize something systemically was wrong ( brain damage, psychosis, drugs or in with a bad crowd ) but we seem to not eant to hold badly behaved adults to the same standards. We need to.

The appearance of trustworthiness:
“Given the crumbling trust in traditional media and our vulnerability to lies on social media, we should not be surprised that politicians on both sides try to manipulate voters into believing lies. After all, the incentive for politicians is to get elected, not tell the truth. To be elected, politicians need to convey the appearance of trustworthiness – what Stephen Colbert infamously called “truthiness” – as opposed to being actually trustworthy. If politicians can safely ignore fact-checking by traditional news media, and instead use social media to get their followers to believe their claims, the scale is tilted toward post-truth politics.”https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/intentional-insights/201706/behavioral-science-solution-lies-in-politics
And then we have our Truth Umpire, the ABC (sarc).

An addendum. As a guide to understanding and predicting the course of events in the Democratic march to the presidential nomination, may
I reccomend:
The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 … Barbara Tuchman.
I reference the section in which a noted and respected historian dissects the Dreyfus affair.

In 1952 two things happened to me that changed my life.
On Saturday afternoons I was allowed to go to the “pictures” and on Sunday morning to Sunday school.
On top of starting real school, it was a big year.
The church was essentially a community church which made no deference to either England or Rome.

I felt that I was in a positive space in the world.

The world felt real and seemed balanced.
By contrast even the very young these days cannot escape the constant bombardment of the T.V. and the lack of contact with the real world is a Big negative.
In hindsight the were some significant evils at work underground in our society way back, but they were hidden.

When Ruairi can list so many point of concern that came into focus on the blog just in the last week or so, it suggests that we may need a reality check and the essential things for me are:

The problem with Australian politics is that it is very difficult to identify the politicians who became candidates for election to do public service on behalf of the people who voted for them and the self serving globalists who deceive the people and become part of the cooperative of politicians working with UN officials and other foreigners to sell us out.

Exactly, the politicians we elect are akin to a large business operation, we get to choose a person for the position that will best follow the company line with their personal values and aptitude coming a distant second, the system is so controlled the pool of candidates with the lesser leadership qualities are in the vast majority, going through the choices of the last Vic election most of the candidates were not just a little bit shady but openly appalling.

It has become a terrible case of some people should never get a hint of power to those people are in power with at least half the electorate to blame, think back to your working life and remember that co-worker that despite their zero people skills and psychopathic behaviour was in a position that negatively effected everyone and short of getting yourself fired there was nothing you could do about it.

This my friends is the hole we have dug for ourselves having the worst in our political system leading the best in our society, any political equilibrium has long fallen to the left and can only be corrected with a reversal of the polls.

Research the concept of Right of Recall elections. This is in force in many overseas jurisdictions which allows the electorate to call non performing members to be dismissed at any time during the tenure. See Ontario Canada for example. Australia desperately needs this power to be placed in the hands of the electorate.

There is a growing tsunami of nationalist conservative politics now emerging to cleanse rancid, decaying secular corporatist globalism. It is vigorous, rational and compelling. It restores tradition, culture, customs, borders, Christianity, national identity, prosperity, freedom and hope. It is as evident in the USA as it is in Europe. There appears no real sign down-under.

The trick will be for Australia and New Zealand not to slide behind the curve of history and progress, which under current administrations in either country there appears little chance of avoiding this fate. After all in NZ, PM Comrade Ardern is a devoted socialist, another AOC clone.

The social narcosis, media and education conditioning is strong, the practical down-to-earth nature of the people will eventually prove stronger, while the division, inequality and exclusion of identity politics crystallises the very definition of unsustainable.

There is so much depth to that simple statement. Unfortunately today there are far too many influences on our lives that are designed to keep us unbalanced, particularly so for our children. As a child in the 70′s we were more naive and less worldly than children of today but we were better balanced and knew who we were and what we were about. We had a shared set of values, less distractions and were given the freedom, the right even, to just be kids.

We didn’t have a T.V. until I was 9 or so but I would sit glued to the radio for my favorite serials every afternoon after school.

I occasionally put the radio in my car to work while I’m driving and what I hear is mostly the new whiney pseudo political victimhood stuff.

To me it sounds like rubbish, but to youngsters trying to make their way in the world it is the background narrative to their life.

Horrible stuff.

To top that I hear tonight that the state government is going to give interest free loans to 300,000 NSW residents to buy Rooftop Solar. My estimate is a minimum of 6 billion dollars worth of income for the “Solar” Industry and a giant headache in about 10 years time when they need replacement.

That’s a lot of money swishing around.
The message is “screw nsw taxpayers”.

A new AAA study finds that when the thermometer dropped to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, [EV] range fell by an average of 41 percent on the five models it tested.

“We found that the impact of temperature on EVs is significantly more than we expected,” said Greg Brannon, AAA’s director of automotive engineering.

Some EV drivers — including this correspondent — recently found that range can drop by half when the mercury tumbles into negative territory. The AAA study appears to be the first to have used standard, repeatable methodology to confirm the problem and compare the effect of winter temperatures on different models.

Tesla fans will tell you that they use waste heat from the batteries for cabin heat. Sounds like a meagre ration to me, maybe enough to defrost the windscreen. Logic says that if it was plentiful, the batteries are inefficient.

The Tesla 3 lugs somewhat more than 1000lbs of battery dead-weight. The car curb weight is slightly in excess of 4000lbs.
Talk about name plate versus capacity factor.
Once again, it is what they don’t tell that is key.
This is one of the most inefficient, energy squandering Green Eggs & Ham delusions ever foisted on governments, generating companies and people.
Just another cripplingly expensive, ideological virtue signalling blob of green pus that most can’t thankfully afford.
Moreover, there is NO hope of running it on Green Deal intermittents.
This is why there will be no private car ownership or freedom in UNsustainable World, which is also why it won’t happen.

Most dry cell batteries internal chemical reactions stop just under 5°C. Most domestic refrigerator’s (assuming correctly set/adjusted) are at 4deg;C where the reaction is stopped. I keep my dry cells in the bottom of my refrigerator to extend their shelf life. It works very well with refrigerated shelf life of over 10 years easily achieved.

So EV batteries, if chilled sufficiently, could stop working completely.
Oops.

Heard a report that claims Australians are installing solar panels at a far greater rate than any other country. While without saying it, the inference was Aussies are concerned about climate change and therefore are doing their individual bit. I would rather think the uptake of solar panels is an attempt to reduce ever escalating power bills. A one off cost of installation and a rebate no matter how small does reduce that quarterly invoice that in some instances is quite crippling to family budgets. Nothing to do with climate at all.

That isn’t correct 54% believe, but repeated surveys show only 1% are prepared to pay more than $100 per annum to do anything about it. This implies that 99% think AGW is not worth worrying about.

This is why we are forced into paying against our wills because the population does NOT want to pay for this, the way to avoid paying the green tax is having your own energy supply fossil fuel or otherwise.

So it’s correct to say that rooftop solar is driven by cost pressure but it’s a planned cost pressure designed to relieve us of our money. Left in place though it will eventually drive grids electricity substitution as consumer completely out out, this will eventually collapse the funding model of electricity distribution as email collapsed the postal system.

The irony is that the reason electricity prices are the highest in the world is the ‘rebate’, which comes from the LGCs and STCs hidden in the electricity bills of everyone. So does the pay in rate. Solar panels are a upper to middle class ripoff of the poor who pay and get nothing, not even electricity. So this is a self sustaining ripoff.

Yes, it’s the RET eligibility for certificates which necessarily doubles the income for renewables generation but this artefact of the legislation is never brought up by journalists at press conferences.

“Minister, why should consumers pay twice for renewable energy?” is a no brainer to expose the deceit of d’Ambrosio and Harwin.

Tucker Carlson interviewed AOC’s adviser on the green deal and he denied she advocates a wage for those “unwilling” to work, saying that was a GOP hack. He also denies that she advocates grounding aircraft.

It would be a good use of city wood waste and eucalyptus oil waste, beyond that it would seem to have extremely limited application, unless they combust municipal waste en masse, which apparently it is not designed for or it would have been listed as a fuel source.

As this process produces biochar it is obviously a combustion process, not a digestion process to produce the Syngas.

The feedstocks they name are either non-existent over most of the country or already fully committed for other higher-value purposes than simply being burnt.

• Mallee waste from eucalyptus oil production is found in about 0.01% of the continent.
• Straw is at a premium in drought times like this but even normally as the roughage component in feedlot rations. Besides that, removing all crop wastes on a regular basis is also a quick way to turn your farm soil into unproductive concrete due to the lack of organic matter being returned to the soil to maintain structure and carbon content.
• No one in their right mind is going to use chicken litter (a prime source of N and P for farms and home gardens as Dynamic Lifter etc) to burn for Syngas.
• Most commercially-produced woodchips are already spoken for. Even waste woodchips in large urban garbage dumps are frequently sold off as mulch too. One Hunter Valley power station was going to supplement coal with wood pellets as fuel, but the supply was only sufficient to have a trickle of pellets used when they were available. It was more a green PR stunt than an actual fuel source.
• There was a trial biochar facility in Newcastle about 10 years ago but it fell in a heap due to a lack of timber feedstock in a place the size of greater Newcastle.

Feedstocks may appear to be in abundance until you really start looking seriously and find that they only appear to be abundant because they are not being used. Once you start using them they disappear quicker than you can find them. Continuity of supply is the killer.

Even if there were enough feedstocks, we are still left with a multiplicity of small generation plants doing what should be done by large, efficient generation units with massive economies of scale and greater reliability than some backyard setup operated by a small town. How such a setup would improve reliability strains credulity. What is fine on the minute scale of a single village or business is not necessarily scalable or appropriate for larger scale operations.

The best part of the article for me is that we have this admission in an ABC article:

“Some of the syngas will go into a boiler to make hot water. The exhaust from that boiler is very clean — it’s a rich source of CO2, carbon dioxide.
“That will go into the glasshouse to enrich the CO2 levels in the glasshouse, which is a way that glasshouse operators lift the yield of their plants.”

“• Most commercially-produced woodchips are already spoken for. Even waste woodchips in large urban garbage dumps are frequently sold off as mulch too.”

Personally I hope they don’t introduce subsidies for waste woodchips from tree loppers.
I regularly get truckloads of free woodchips for my garden from them.
I asked the last guy what they usually do with it and he said it costs $10 a cube to dump at the local tip.
It is generally half leaves and moist, which is fine for mulch, but I imagine it would take a lot drying to burn well – an extra expense.

If this system was at the end of a line which this one is I think and if there is a ready source of waste to burn it’s probably worthwhile but I suspect being at the end of the line will cause sync problems .

Depends a lot on where you are George. Where I used to work we had to dump a lot of sawdust and scrap timber offcuts at $160/tonne (about 10 years ago, probably well over $200/tonne now). It wasn’t viable to store it for 9 months of the year until the winter demand for firewood, when we gave it away to get rid of it in any case. I searched for alternative uses to save on disposal costs. When the Newcastle biochar project fizzled, I looked at importing a pelletising machine and associated machinery for around $600,000 up front cost, but all that would have achieved was turning square bits of wood into round bits of wood at great expense, and we still had no market for the pellets if we made any.

Around here the tree loppers and earth moving companies mostly have secondary businesses as firewood suppliers. All the bigger stuff is split and sold off each winter; only the smaller branches and leaves are chipped, and in the case of the earth movers/land developers, they use mulch produced on-site by tree removal for mulching around their new housing estates.

Here on the north shore of Sydney I know they chip the green waste household collection bins and turn it into compost, which the ANL landscape suppliers resell.
I’m surprised you didn’t have a taker for the sawdust.
I have read about it being used in various gardening and compost applications.

Keeping the judiciary separate from the parliament is essential. But when judges themselves step outside their authority and start making laws, especially those that affect national or economic security, something needs to be done to reign them in.

Gazman,
Judges have always made laws, that’s what the Common Law is — judge-made law, uncodified, as opposed to statute law. Negligence is a perfect example: before 1932 there was no such thing as negligence in the law. The principle of negligence was invented by a group of judges when a woman swallowed a decayed snail from a bottle of ginger beer and there was at that time no recourse for her in English law. The law of negligence, the general duty of care etc was invented just for her.

The problem is when you get activist judges like Proctor and his Gloucester coal decision where he spouts his personal beliefs as part of his judgement. The only way to stop that is by not appointing his kind to the bench. Exactly how you achieve that is another matter.

His judgement revolved around vilifying CO2 and relied heavily on the testimony of Will Steffen. Say no more.

Do not listen to what the politicians say but watch what they do. Then pay attention to what they accomplish. That was their purpose all along. Failure was their goal to be used to justify doing more of the same only more so. Their words are nothing but weapons aimed at disarming you and to make your vote meaningless.

What can we do? About all we are left with is stopping feeding them. Then, when they are starved out, we have a chance to go back to living again.

Obviously, Trump is not an old school politician. That is why the Democrats are so bamboozled by him. Trump says what he is going to do, he does it, and things suddenly give the results he says they would. Then he moves onto the next important thing to get done. All without appearing to work very hard doing it.

His secret is he does the right things in the right way and it works. When you do things that way, it isn’t hard work. Stuff just happens.

Here is a good video about how blaming fat and cholesterol for obesity are based on one of the biggest scientific lies of the 20th century (along with anthropogenic global warming and the alleged harmfulness of DDT).

It was the alteration of the food pyramid in the US in about 1983 that resulted in an explosion of obesity and millions of unnecessary deaths.

In this video he talks about batteries and points out to those who think we can replace all hydrocarbon powered cars with electric ones that modern battery systems are at about their theoretical limits of energy density (which is much less than liquid fuels). Unfortunately he does make reference to anthropogenic climate change as well, as though that was real but I don’t fault the rest of his analysis.

And sadly veganism does nothing for biodiversity. When we are all forced onto a vegetarian diet and agricultural requires more and more cleared fields for crops the big animals are the first to go, then the little animals that eat our vegies will vanish, all in the name of being kind to animals and saving the planet.
There is nothing more lacking in wildlife than a wheat field.

There are carnivores and herbivores. Humans are neither. Humans are omnivores, an eat anything animal.

We have a simple gut. (Pigs are very similar. What they can eat, we mostly can.) We have to have red meat and animal fat in the correct proportions to stay healthy. Sure, some people eat too much and some people eat too little.
The one thing they have in common: they die early.

Already they are calling for drugs to be decriminalised and made a public health issue now the UK have gone one step further into insanity by proposing that knife crime also be a public health issue rather than a criminal offence .

In climate news, Germany’s grand coalition is promising to shut down coal fired power within 20 years. It is already well placed to meet it’s renewables target for 2030. Of course they still have significant nuclear and gas powered production which with the completion of the new gas pipeline from Russia will take up some of the gap losing 37% of their production will cause. Also notable, is that /sarc on “that unreliable renewable sector” /sarc off provides 33% of the power supply (on a yearly basis). Even with such a high renewable component, Electricity is 4 cents a kWh, vs 12 cents a kWh for NSW. in addition the cost of living is also significantly lower than Australia.

It does put the decision to stop the Rocky Hill mine into perspective.

The main sticking point from Australia’s point of view is that Australia has to be 100% reliant on internal supply (I’m counting Basslink as internal)

if I read it correctly, the world coal fired power (and it’s attendant C02) will rise by 2030, from current new projects and expansions to existing power plants. This is a variation on the old discredited argument – “of what difference will my contribution make to a problem that is soo big” . It really says nothing about Germany’s C02 production (up or down)

All usage 11.94 cents per kWh 13.134 cents per kWh Daily supply charge 3.06 cents per day 3.366 cents per day Daily supply charge: a charge that applies for supplying electricity to your property for each day of the billing period, regardless of how much electricity you use. Red energy

QLD 27.6246c/kWh
VIC 28.2461c/kWh
NSW 33.1118c/kWh
SA 42.8816c/kWh
Prices based on single rate electricity tariffs for selected postcodes in each state, August 2018.
As you can see, South Australians are the hardest hit when it comes to the average per kWh price of using power. And to add salt to the wounds, South Australians often miss out on big discounts and bonus perks. Households in Queensland and Victoria generally pay the lowest prices per kWh.

The rates given are in USCents /kwhr. I wouldn’t rely on it too much because exchange rates fluctuate. It’s close but that’s all you can say for it.
Date for the graph is coarse at 2018 even though it may have been published in 2019.

pFitz’s graph from The Conversation was published 31st March 2017. It’s a bit old.
The copyright on the graph I posted is 2018 but that’s a coarse date too.

NZ is not listed at all on The Conversation graph, which lists almost wholly European countries. That must be “The World” for them …
On the Statista graph, NZ is listed as 0.2 (or 20cents) /kWh. At the present exchange rate 1NZD to US0.675637 -> 29.60 cents NZ so the graph is not far out, but it is still out.
1NZD = 0.952242 AUD on the date I did this analysis (2019/02/11) so you can work out your comparisons as and if you feel like it.
To remove all “wriggle room,” I’ve looked at an account from last year and here’s it’s analysis:

Ain’t socialism grand ! You should thank all the poor people for paying for your panels and subsidising your electricity costs while they struggle to put food on the table .
I have thanked them and think you should .

How is that? I purchased my system for $0 upfront, and a payment schedule of 3 years offset against the production of the system. After 3 years I own the system and the power it generates, which happened in 2018. Anyone could take that deal. Nothing to thank anyone for.

You didn’t pay true full price for the system. That was cross-subsidised from other electricity consumers and/or taxpayers. In a free market there is nothing that is as cheap as centralised coal, gas, nuclear or properly engineered hydro electricity production. Solar cannot possibly compete with those except for remote area installations.

I can’t believe he brags about how much he is saving by ripping off those poor pensioners and those who can least afford it .
But hey they would only waste their money on stupid stuff like food and bills anyway .

Do your sums on your “fully paid back solar system” again. This time include depreciation and opportunity cost. Add in the cost of a replacement inverter after 10 years and depreciate that as well as adding the extra opportunity cost involved. Add in annual maintenance and cleaning as well. I suspect you’ll see that your $100 pa is considerably higher.

On the other hand, if you insist that it makes you money, post your analysis here for all of us to see. Just like I did here:

… you know how complicated calculators can be these days what with those mathematical keys like multiply and divide … and X->M, MR, M+
and all the other ones. Bit of an intellectual overload for the poor boy.

Peter, you need to read and put aside your biases to understand. Renewable installations are bigger than fossil fuel or nuke, they’re cover areas measured in square km. They accordingly take more hardware (solidified CO2) to build are exposed to the elements and are accordingly maintenance and security nightmares. For this reason the CO2 emitted in making them isn’t paid back by the energy they produce. They displace biological CO2 sinks and they require a very expansive energy hungry industry to build. They are ugly, expensive, unreliable and don’t solve the problem they set out to solve – CO2 emission. Whether or not you believe the AGW myth Solar and Wind power are NOT the answer.

Your ideological blind spot has you suggesting that something that doesn’t work, doesn’t produce and is more expensive to make somehow makes electricity cheaper.

Renewable energy is akin to two workmen, one digging holes and the other filling them in, a whole Lotta work goes on but no progress is ever made. No CO2 is ever displaced.

Why would all of the biggest electrical equipment manufacturing companies in the World still be designing and manufacturing large scale equipment which can only be used on new coal fired power plants if there’s no future in coal fired power, in the knowledge that the could lose hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars and be sent to the wall if it goes away.

Why would the same, and other companies still be working on advancements in coal fired power four levels of technology more advanced than nearly all the coal fired plants here in Oz, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, billions even, in the knowledge that they will lose the lot and go the wall if it all goes away.

Why would many hundreds of new coal fired power plants be in construction all over the World right now, with more planned.

Why would Germany (for instance) be introducing new coal fired power plants with a projected life span of fifty years if said Country is going to abandon coal fired power in 20 years. (Neurath just one example here of a plant already in operation now for 7 years, and forty to go) Why, if they are going to lose billions if they are forced to shut, not having recovered their original coat, and now also forced to the wall. Why would Germany also be planning and constructive even newer coal fired plants if they know there’s only 20 years left. (link to new coal fired plants in Germany)

Surely all of this wouldn’t just be lip service for all the true believers now, would it. No! Surely not!

Tony – the point is that Germany will move to more than 50% renewables, I tried to give you a reason why this is possible for them, but not for us. But everyone missed it, even though it had its own paragraph and everything.

But no – not even el gordo picked it up. I never thought you would but I gave you the chance.

So the question I posed was about Germany being able to move to over 50% renewables while dumping coal in 20 years.

What no one picked up on, even though I clearly stated it, is that Germany, like the eastern Australian States can buy energy from its neighbours. This is something an isolated Australia can not do.

Germany could, if it wanted, go 100% renewable, and purchase the shortfall on the market, it won’t do that of course, due to energy security concerns.

Australia is self sufficient in electricity generation (because we have to be), and could be so in production of liquid fuels, but it is cheaper to buy the dirty (mostly sulphur) products from Singapore.

They couldnt actually (except maybe in your mind) as their neighbours generation and interconnect capacity is limited and they have there own issues. They are also loath to import Germany’s chaotic grid management issues into their networks when they want to dump uncontrolled excess over the border.

Dave – did you not even bother to look at the link? And then you post some made up numbers.

Despite all the hand waving, Germany can purchase its energy from its neighbours, Australia can not. This is more about Australia and it’s problems, but not one of you here seems to comprehend.

What will make you understand?

As this site asserts there was, is, and always will be a need for baseload power to provide energy security to the Country. There is also a need for peaking power to cover really hot days etc. In Australia, as this summer has shown, we are very close to max capacity, and our neighbours, like Indonesia, or New Zealand can not help us. If Germany was in that situation it would bid into the European market to cover its shortfall.

From numbro:
Consumer Prices in Germany are 7.12% lower than in Australia
Consumer Prices Including Rent in Germany are 12.33% lower than in Australia
Rent Prices in Germany are 23.91% lower than in Australia
Restaurant Prices in Germany are 10.42% lower than in Australia
Groceries Prices in Germany are 19.67% lower than in Australia

Yep. German solar is hyper-expensive decor. The Germans can afford acres of panels at 50+ degrees N: they have the industrial wealth to cover such waste. And they have accountants and propagandists to manipulate the waste into a host of “savings” and offsets. Their creaky new empire called the EU is made for all that.

While Poland is blocking Russian gas by politically acquiring US product at (concealed) losses – so much for US self-sufficiency – Germany is waiting for the implementation of Nordstream 2 from Russia. Straining the already strained NATO and EU may not be “optimal” but the westerly flow of energy and easterly flow of product across that N European plain has always been as natural as gravity. It’s the ultimate “emerging market” and the players, for and against, know it.

Barring new wars of the hot and cold varieties fought for the old reasons, Germany will run on German/eastern coal and Russian gas. The rest is politics, decoration and accounting. Wind and solar will contribute, but so would a billion electric toothbrushes tied together.

The truck capable of driving without refuelling to Brisbane and beyond while the EVUT would need recharging at least three or four times between Sydney and Brisbane fully loaded. However, based in wind turbine performance the 1 tonne capacity trucks would only work 2.1 days out of every 7 but the drivers would never know which days they would work.

And for every million kilometres the big trucks were driven the EVUT would be replaced at least 2.5 times.

‘The Alfvénic waves are also responsible for heating and accelerating powerful solar wind from the sun which travels through the solar system. These winds travel at speeds of around a million miles per hour. They also affect the atmosphere of stars and planets, impacting on their own magnetic fields, and cause phenomena such as aurora.’

Fitz I think you are being deliberately confusing.
Or maybe not bright enough to understand what is being said !

The sun has an atmosphere.It’s called the corona.

Sound waves do exist within the sun and within the corona.

And those sound waves according to this research have an impact on the magnetic waves that radiate out from the sun throughout the solar system.

“After examining data gathered over a 10-year period, the team from Northumbria’s Department of Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering found that magnetic waves in the sun’s corona – its outermost layer of atmosphere – react to sound waves escaping from the inside of the sun.

These magnetic waves, known as Alfvénic waves, play a crucial role in transporting energy around the sun and the solar system. The waves were previously thought to originate at the sun’s surface, where boiling hydrogen reaches temperatures of 6,000 degrees and churns the sun’s magnetic field.

However, the researchers have found evidence that the magnetic waves also react – or are excited – higher in the atmosphere by sound waves leaking out from the inside of the sun.

The team discovered that the sound waves leave a distinctive marker on the magnetic waves. The presence of this marker means that the sun’s entire corona is shaking in a collective manner in response to the sound waves. This is causing it to vibrate over a very clear range of frequencies.”

This was el gordo “Sound waves leaking from the sun.”
Now you have changed that to “Sound waves do exist within the sun and within the corona” and the corona is as much a part of the sun as the atmosphere is part of the earth. Logically therefore “Sound waves leaking from the sun” would be taken to mean that like in star wars you could hear the sound of the sun in space, which is nonsense.

If you had read, and perhaps comprehended 19.1.1.1 you would not have needed this explanation.

I agree with Lionel Griffith about not listening to what politicians say, what what they do. I will believe climate change is a problem when the people who keep saying it’s a problem, start behaving as if it’s a problem. There are many of examples but one high profile example I recall, was in November 2007 just after the Rudd Government was elected. There was a climate change conference of some sort in Bali. It seemed like only a couple of days earlier former Vice President Al Gore, high profile believer in climate change, was in Norway to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for his climate change work. A couple of days later he was at the conference in Bali. I assume he used a private aircraft of some sort, hardly a low carbon dioxide emission means of travel.

Polar bears were supposedly going extinct because the Arctic sea ice was melting and . they could no longer hunt seals on the ice. But this Winter there is lots of Arctic sea ice..It’s goddam freezing cold up there. Lots of ice to hunt on for seals !

Yet still the polar bears are seeking food in human settlements and terrifying people….

But dear, dear BBC believes “”With Arctic sea ice diminishing as a result of climate change, polar bears are forced to change their hunting habits and spend more time on land looking for food – which potentially puts them in conflict with humans.”

Dopey bloody reporters and dopey editors who just can’t think beyond their dogma.

Listen up BEEBE : Polar bears are very intelligent animals. They’ve worked out that ‘hunting’ food around human settlements is a far more reliable way of getting a feed than hunting seals on the ice.

And now our lovely dopey ABC has posted the same Poor Polar Bears story -

It parades the same reason for polar bears congregating at human settlements in Siberia :” The loss of Arctic sea ice due to climate change is the primary threat to polar bears and contributes to nutritional stress according to a report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Polar Bear Specialist group. Polar bears are increasingly forced onto land to look for food.”

But there is no attribution to the BBC !

Clearly the BBC & the ABC do not have any crap editors nowadays. Or perhaps the editors are crap.

It is winter up there Bill, So more ice, that is at it an all time low for this time of the year (NSIDC), polar bears have been around human settlements for 100′s of years, and yet it’s a problem now – those ‘very intelligent” animals have only just worked out this assertion about food?

Mind you if you were wrong on electricity prices there was pretty much a sure bet you were wrong on sea ice so no big surprise.
Unless of course your all time low has another definition other than lowest evvvaaahhhhh .

You didn’t provide the link Fitz I did , seems it was only the sixth lowest on record but by your metric its growing at a faster than eevvaahhh pace .

Arctic sea ice extent for January averaged 13.56 million square kilometers (5.24 million square miles). This was 860,000 square kilometers (332,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average sea ice extent, and 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) above the record low for the month set in January 2018. January 2019 was the sixth lowest January extent in the 1979 to 2019 satellite record but no matter still far from lowest evah and record only seems to cover satellite so really none of these stats mean a thing either most or least sea ice only covers a few short years .

The average rate of daily ice growth of 51,200 square kilometers (19,800 square miles) was faster than the long-term average. Ice growth primarily occurred in the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk in the Pacific sector as well as in the Labrador and Kara Seas. Some ice spread to the northeast of Svalbard, while retreating slightly to the northwest of these islands. Total ice extent was tracking at eighth lowest on January 31, with below average extent in nearly all sectors of the Arctic.

Grrrrrr read that 100 times and couldnt find the eighth lowest but there it is bottom of page .
Be it 8 or six or even lowest evah as you say it’s all worthless information given the amount of years it covers .

Female polar bears generally give birth from 1 to 4 cubs per year (mostly 2). This naturally means a rapidly expanding population which is controlled by a limited food supply. So there will periodically be times when some bears starve to death or die from malnutrition caused disease. During these times bears will desperately seek for food wherever they smell it, including dangerous human habitations. This has always happened wherever people live anywhere near bears.

might be worth noting re Novaya Zemlya region which is the subject of the BBBC piece:

Landscapecycles.net: Why Vanishing Ice Is Likely All Natural?
(transcript and citations based on video)(LINK)
In 2004, Dr. Geoff Jenkins, Head of the Climate Prediction Programme at England’s Hadley Centre, was prompted by the evidence of no warming, to email the IPCC’s Phil Jones and ask and I quote “would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for Kilimanjaro glacier melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?” Yet due to the politicization of climate science, Al Gore shared the Nobel Prize despite perpetuating the global warming myth of Kilimanjaro…

Warm Atlantic waters that don’t enter the Irminger Current, continue deeper into the Arctic, mostly via the Barents Sea. Greater volumes of intruding warm water cause greater reductions of ice in the Barents and Kara Seas, deep inside the Arctic Circle. Danish Sea Ice records reveal a similar loss of sea ice during the 1930s rivaling the recent decline.

Coinciding with cycles of reduced sea ice, glaciers on the island Novaya Zemlya in the Barents Sea, also underwent their greatest retreat around 1920 to 1940.61 After several decades of stability, its tidewater glaciers began retreating again around the year 2000, but at a rate five times slower than the 1930s.47 The recent cycle of intruding warm Atlantic water45 is now waning and if solar flux remains low, we should expect Arctic sea ice in the Barents and Kara seas to begin a recovery and Arctic glaciers to stabilize within the next 15 years…http://landscapesandcycles.net/-vanishing-ice-all-natural.html

Sage: Changes in glacier extent on north Novaya Zemlya in the twentieth century
by Jaapjan Zeeberg, Steven L. Forman
First published 1 Feb 2001
Between 1964 and 1993 half of the studied glaciers were stable; the remainder retreated modest distances of <2.5 km. This stability coincides with decreasing average temperatures, especially during the winter, which is counter to model prediction…ETChttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1191/095968301676173261

On Outsiders this morning University of NSW researchers have discovered that CO2 can be used to purify water and the system developed will be used to help third world countries to provide safe drinking water to their people.

8 Feb: The Hill: Adam Schiff, Glenn Simpson and their Forrest Gump-like encounter in Aspen
by John Solomon
Which bring us to the issue of some photographs taken at the prestigious Aspen security conference last July.
They show Schiff meeting at the event with Fusion GPS Founder Glenn Simpson, one of the key and most controversial figures in the Russia collusion scandal. Both men insisted to me through spokesmen that they met only briefly last July…

“In the summer of 2018, Mr. Simpson attended a media-sponsored social event where he exchanged small talk with Rep. Schiff and many other people who were in attendance,” Fusion GPS said in a statement to me. “The conversation between the two was brief and did not cover anything substantive. There has been no subsequent contact between Mr. Simpson and Rep. Schiff.”

it was reported multiple times on Murdoch’s Fox News. never saw it on Australian media.

instead, just now we had, on Murdoch’s Sky News Australia, lengthy report from Gillard/Obama man, Bruce Wolpe, about Trump’s bad week and how “Mr. Schiff” is opening investigations into – among other things – Trump/Russia collusion.

Sky followed with CNN rubbish on the latest freeze in the US, but it looked stale and ended with the temps will rise by the weekend, just in time for the Superbowl! clearly the wrong video.

this was followed by report on how Sky News is joining Nekton marine expedition (along with Associated Press btw) to study climate change/coral etc. Seychelles official comes on with a big grin on his face, saying if we don’t tackle CAGW, think of what it will mean for the children/grand-children, etc”. Sky has a number of links, including:

24 Feb: Sky News: Why do we need to explore the deep ocean?
Sky is to broadcast the first live TV news bulletins from under the sea to
draw attention to the plight of the world’s oceans
By Oliver Steeds, Nekton mission director and submersible pilot
This layer of the ocean provides critical indicators of change enabling scientists to measure and understand the effects of climate change, heat absorption, acidification, the ocean carbon cycle, the impacts of resource extraction, and the degree of plastic, agricultural and industrial pollution…https://news.sky.com/story/why-do-we-need-to-explore-the-deep-ocean-11615602

John Solomon was just on Fox’s Justice with Judge Jeanine (along with Gregg Jarrett) re the following:

6 Feb: The Hill: John Solomon: Mueller hauled before secret FISA court to address FBI abuses in 2002, Congress told
Robert Mueller, the former FBI director and current special prosecutor in the Russia case, once was hauled before the nation’s secret intelligence court to address a large number of instances in which the FBI cheated on sensitive surveillance warrants, according to evidence gathered by congressional investigators.
For most of the past 16 years, Mueller’s closed-door encounter escaped public notice because of the secrecy of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)…

The episode is taking on new significance as Mueller moves into the final stages of his Russia probe while evidence mounts that the FBI work preceding his appointment as special prosecutor may have involved improprieties in the securing of a FISA warrant to spy on Donald Trump’s campaign in the final weeks of the 2016 campaign.
The sin that plagued the FBI two decades ago, and that now lingers over the Russia case, involves the omission of material facts by agents applying for FISA warrants in sensitive counterterrorism and counterintelligence cases…

We know the FBI falsely told the court in the first application warrant that it knew of no derogatory information about the dossier author, Christopher Steele, a retired British intelligence operative who worked simultaneously as an FBI source and a Clinton campaign opposition researcher. In fact, a senior Justice Department official named Bruce Ohr warned the FBI that Steele was desperate to stop Trump from becoming president, and other evidence showed Steele had been leaking to the media in violation of FBI rules — all derogatory evidence weighing against Steele’s credibility.
Further, we’ve learned from congressional testimony of other FBI officials that the dossier’s contents had not been corroborated by the FBI when it was used in the FISA application — even though the Woods Procedures mentioned above required that only corroborated evidence be used in support of a warrant request…https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/428755-mueller-hauled-before-secret-fisa-court-to-address-fbi-abuses-in-2002

the Solomon article on Adam Schiff/Glenn Simpson meeting in Aspen was also discussed.

Solomon ended by saying he has a new article out tomorrow US time about a dozen Democrats who met with Russians during the 2016 campaign. Gregg Jarrett says he has that in his book, “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump”.
Solomon and Jarrett both believe the investigation will now move to Democrat/Clinton/Russia collusion – given Richard Burr’s statement about no Trump/Russia collusion found – and the FISA Court judges will have to finally come forward to question the applications for FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign via Carter Page:

TWEET: Donald J. Trump: The mainstream media has refused to cover the fact that the head of the VERY important Senate Intelligence Committee, after two years of intensive study and access to Intelligence that only they could get, just stated that they have found NO COLLUSION between “Trump” & Russia….
8 Feb 2019

TWEET: Gregg Jarrett, Fox:
Sen. Richard Burr, Chair of Senate Intel Committee: “We don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign & Russia.” This, after interviewing more than 200 witnesses & examining over 300,000 pages. I’ll be talking about it on Hannity tonight at 9.
7 Feb 2019

7 Feb: The Hill: John Bowden: Senate intel chairman: ‘We don’t have anything’ to prove collusion between Trump campaign and Russia
The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday said his panel has still found no evidence to suggest that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told CBS News on Thursday that “based on the evidence” his committee has seen so far, there is no reason to suggest that members of the Trump campaign and the Russian government were working together during the election…

9 Feb: KTLA: AP: Winter snowstorm wallops Pacific Northwest; Washington declares state of emergency
A winter storm pounded Washington state Friday, forcing the cancellation of 200 flights in Seattle as officials worked to get people off the streets and into shelters during the nation’s latest bout with winter weather…
Many businesses closed early so workers could get home…
“Forecasters predict this may be a storm unlike one we’ve seen in many years,” he said.

In California, more than 120 visitors and staff members were rescued after being snowbound in a Sierra Nevada resort for five days.
Up to 7 feet (2 meters) of snow had trapped the guests and staff beginning Sunday at Montecito Sequoia Lodge in Kings Canyon National Park, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Alicia Embrey said…
Crews had to travel by snowmobile to get to the lodge in mountains east of Fresno. Heavy equipment and crews then cleared more than 20 fallen trees and 8 miles (13 kilometers) of deep snow on the road leading to the lodge to allow guests and staff to leave the property Thursday night.
Another winter storm was on the way to the region.

In Yosemite National Park, as many as 50 housing structures near Half Dome Village were damaged by trees toppled during a snowstorm earlier this week, displacing more than 160 employees who provide food, lodging and other services for visitors…
Elsewhere, more than 148,000 customers were without electricity in Michigan following days of freezing rain…

Snowfall from Sunday and Monday lingered into the week as below-freezing temperatures gripped the area. A 59-year-old man died Thursday from exposure at a Seattle light rail station…
The city was focused on people who are willing to come inside, Will Lemke, spokesman for the Seattle Human Services Department, told the Seattle Times.
“This is an extreme weather event, and offering shelter is the most important thing we can do right now,” he said…
Residents in Portland and Seattle, two cities where rain is more common than snow in the winter, emptied grocery store shelves and waited in long lines to buy shovels and de-icer…

the 3min22sec video shown in search results for the following AP report has been replaced by a photo gallery of 40 pics in every case I’ve checked. cannot find it despite searching:

8 Feb: MidlandDaily News: Snowbound California guests freed after 5 days at lodge
by Amanda Lee Myers, Associated Press
PHOTO GALLERY
The Forest Service urged visitors to travel with extreme caution.
“The most recent storm has left very little room to maneuver and nowhere to put new snow,” Ned Kelleher, chief ranger for Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, said in a statement.
He added: “The trees are snow and ice laden and the accumulating new snow will cause failures.”https://www.ourmidland.com/news/article/Snowbound-Sierra-Nevada-lodge-guests-freed-13601124.php

You have to give credit to Trump for many things. Even his greatest enemies know they have a fight on their hands. However his two big items in the State of the Union address were brilliant in content and timing. Calling out socialism was just fantastic. Abortion is a real and emotional women’s issue too.

In naming socialism as the enemy of America, he has swing an axe though the Democrats. Now they have to choose. No more pretending it is not their platform.

So the Occasio-Cortez’ Green New Deal came out straight away! Just about everyone recognizes it for what it is, lunacy. No cars. No planes. No animals. No borders. No electricity. No country. Cash for everyone. Communism as in formerly rich Venezuela and Cuba and poverty struck Russia. Even National Socialist Adolph promised a car for every family and an annual beach holiday for everyone. OC is promising even more, a new deal when the economy is actually booming, black unemployment is way down and five million people are off food stamps OC is promising a better future? What’s wrong with the one they have?

Bernie Sanders must be absolutely fuming. OC has completely blown his cover and stolen his university students. Why not change the name from Democrats to National Socialists? Corbyn in the UK must be flinching too. How do you defend against the truth?

Plus all the anti-semitism is effectively out in the open now. The anti fascists are the fascists. The anti discrimination people are the racists. The victims are the assailants, certainly in the case of the Covington boys and the Labor and Democrat politicians are the ones facing charges.

Plus he named abortion. Really, full term abortion is not freedom for women. People have been jailed for less. Children are not disposable property. Most Americans believe that absolutely too. It is still a Christian country with a great respect for human life.

So no full term abortion, no socialism, no racism. He has focused the country on what the Democrats are saying and how they have been taken over completely by the racist, socialist, violent swamp. Trump must be amused at all the blackface and rape and discrimination allegations faced by the democrats.

As for ‘Climate Change’, he made fools of the Global Warming crowd with the record cold from America to Europe. Global Warming?
Everyone knows Global Climate Change Extreme warming drowning cities is just the lever to get people to vote socialist. They also know bushfires and floods are not the weather.

Really it was the most explosive State of the Union address. Even OC was cheering the boom in women in the workforce. Now that was amazing for everyone and very embarrassing for the Democrats.

Can you believe asking the people of America to destroy everything to prevent a tiny bit of warming in the face of the coldest winter anyone can remember? You have to consider Trump forced them to come forward with this crazy plan, not in mid summer but at the very point where most Americans were sheltering from the freezing wind. Beautiful timing. OC is so impatient for Socialism, she could not wait until the proposition made any sense. Plus she openly danced around with Trump’s great achievement in increasing women employment.

I think the black and Latino people are also evaluating whether all those years of voting Democrat achieved anything at all. As Kanye West said, they had a black President for eight years and the black people of Chicago were no better off. Plus the Latinos who made it are seriously worried about the gangs following them over the border and bringing the worst of South America to their new safe and prosperous home.

“I posted the official local Townsville BOM rainfall observations further above which total 1421.4 mm, in 13 days. The only inaccuracy I saw during this event was that all media repeatedly quoted BOM sources claiming that much more rain had fallen on Townsville (at that time) than what the official BOM instrument at Townsville airport had recorded (by several hundred mm in fact).

“This seemed to be related to statements made at the Premier”s news conference(s) by a BOM spokesperson. Who appeared to be dishonestly including data for the whole of the Summer wet season period to date in Townsville, instead of just for this particular rainfall event, which began on the 27th Jan, 2019. Providing wrong or inflated information like that to the media is not acceptable, as the actual figures were sufficiently serious, so why hype it to the media and have them reporting nonsense?

“BOM spokespeople have no excuses at all for getting the numbers wrong, accidentally, or deceptively. It’s a serious failing when that occurs within the context of a media conference – clean up your act please BOM”…

WXcycles posted rainfall figures in comment #18 & reply #18.1

i tried, but failed to post some stuff identifying the BOM spokesperson with the Qld Premier, so will try again now:

Went to Coles a couple of days ago [Wollies was flooded and still closed] and there was a pallet of white vinegar as you walked in and many were buying it. Chlorine only bleaches mould, vinegar kills it.

If donating choose a reputable charity not any Mayor’s or Premier’s appeal. Anna Bligh organised one after the Brisbane floods, years later it had not all been distributed and there was a means test to be eligible. Note: Bligh was a labor premier, why would she want to give aid to silvertails just because they lost everything? If you want to help graziers who need fodder for stranded cattle Rotary are helping out. I trust them.

9News: Multiple stories
(SCROLL DOWN) ‘THERE IS AN END IN SIGHT’
By Luke Cooper 05 Feb 2019 12:32
VIDEO: Richard Wardle with Qld Premier at Press Conference: 5min38sec (AT 4MIN44 WARDLE TAKES A QUESTION AND GIVES A NUMBER OF RAINFALL TOTALS IN HIS REPLY, BUT NOT THE 2199MM ONE)
The Bureau of Meteorology believes intense rainfall and thunderstorm conditions could soon ease over much of Far North Queensland – but not before another string of days with wild weather.
Queensland BoM acting state manager Richard Wardle today told reporters that warnings are still in place ahead of another high chance of heavy rain to come.
“We expect this active monsoon to remain active for coming days, potentially easing over the weekend,” he said.
“We’re expecting further periods of heavy rainfall, some of it very heavy, about the north-east tropics for the next few days between about Cardwell and Mackay.
“With that, there is the real elevated risk of flash flooding. We saw that last night up at Blue Water Creek, getting 349mm to 9am this morning.”

Mr Wardle said multiple Severe Weather Warnings are still in place for Far North Queensland for the potential of flash flooding despite the gradual lowering of river water levels.
“Six hourly totals between 150mm and 200mm are possible and concentrated areas of intense rainfall with totals of up to 300mm are also possible with bands of thunderstorms,” he said.
“Because of this dynamic monsoon, we see the flood risk continuing for the remainder of the week and into next week, particularly for those larger river systems.”https://www.9news.com.au/2019/02/05/07/50/townsville-floods-news-latest-rescues-forecast

PressReader: 10 Feb: UK Express: HEAD TEACHERS SUPPORT PUPIL STRIKE
Outrage as union backs classroom walkout on Friday
EXCLUSIVE by Tony Whitfield
THE head teachers’ union has applauded a planned strike by school pupils who will walk out of lessons on Friday over climate change.
The mass action, called UK Youth Strike 4 Climate, is set to see thousands of pupils put down their pens for three hours to demandhttps://www.pressreader.com/uk/sunday-express1070/textview

As you know, I recently had a Heart Pacemaker fitted, four days before Christmas.

They pass the long conducting wire down the long vein/artery to the Ventricle at the bottom of the heart, pass a shorter conducting wire to the Atrium at the top of the heart, gently ‘screw’ them in, and then connect both wires to the detector just under my left collarbone. The detector is around an inch and a half in size and relatively flat, and sits just under the skin.

The heart itself has its own pacemaker, the sinus node, and those Atriums and Ventricles open in a set sequence. The sinus node sends a tiny electrical current to the Atrium for it to open, and then, a fraction of a second later a small electrical current to the ventricle for it to open. These tiny electrical currents travel from the top of the Heart to the bottom of the heart via what is referred to as the bundle branch, a grouping of joined cells which conduct that tiny current. There’s a bundle branch for either side.

I had what is referred to as a Right Bundle Branch block, and it showed up on an ECG at rest, and then under a stress test, where, connected to an ECG machine, I worked hard at a very fast walking speed for around eight or nine minutes, while the heart specialist and his nurse watched the ECG. The right bundle branch group of cells occasionally missed that pulse to the bottom of the heart (Syncope) on that right side, and at the top of the heart, the heart rate would occasionally slow down, and that’s referred to as BradyCardia.

The new Pacemaker detects both ‘situations’, and supplies that small electrical current, each time it happens, and the remainder of the time, the sinus node does its ‘job’, as the problem is only intermittent.

I was warned that the Physio following something like this was something really difficult to endure, so when I got the call from the Physio, I was sort of dreading it. We spoke for nigh on forty minutes all up, and the upshot was that I had no need to attend. She wnated to know if I was doing any exercise, and I told her of my walking to alleviate a lower back condition, fitness walking actually. (and you can look that phrase up, as it’s not power walking as some think it is) When she heard what I was already doing, and that I couldn’t wait to get back to it, she advised that was the perceived ‘problem’ with physio for something like this, trying to actually motivate older people with no record of exercise to actually do some, and they recommend walking, and she said I needed no motivation, so there was no real need for me to attend any physio sessions.

I asked my heart specialist when I could start again, and he was satisfied that I could start as soon after that appointment as I wanted to, and three weeks from having it fitted, I started again, slowly at first and a much shorter distance, and gradually working back up. I’m now back at around 3.5 Kilometres and 30 Minutes with my heart rate up to between 104 and 112. I’ve had a second visit with the specialist and he says he sees no reason why I couldn’t get back to what I was doing before, but that’s a way off yet.

I have also been back for two appointments at the GCUH unit which fitted the device, and had some tests done. At the first visit, they noted that the lower conducting wire seemed to have worked its way out ever so slightly from where it was originally placed. That was no problem, as they just set the threshold for firing a little higher than normal.

At the second visit, they found that it had worked its way back into a tighter fit again, and they just set that threshold back to its original setting. They even mentioned that this sometimes happens as that lead ‘finds’ a better seating point.

They drape a small unit over your shoulder directly over the pacemaker, and just download ALL the information on board the pacemaker, and it downloads into the computer. That’s everything since the last visit.

They can tell everything that has happened to the Unit and the heart since. The top is working 20% of the time, and that’s slightly less than normal, and the bottom is working at 5%, well less than normal for the average pacemaker fitment across all users.

They then also do some diagnostics, and part of that is battery life. Because that bottom wire has worked back in, and is set a little lower now, they calculate the battery life at twelve years, and at the first checkup, it was ten years.

Now that both the top and the bottom are back in sequence, the bundle branch blockage is less intermittent than it originally was.

The upshot of the whole thing is that had I not fainted that morning on my morning 6KM walk, and had that range of tests as a precaution, I would never have known at all.

You cannot imagine how thankful I am that this was found when it was found.

I’m also on a Statin now to lower my cholesterol level, which was below the limit prior to all this, but is set at a lower level for people with a heart condition.

I asked the specialist if I need to do anything different or to look out for anything, but he suggested I just live my life as I normally do now.

It gives a whole new and ‘personal’ understanding of the wonders of modern medicine, but also I wonder that the heart does all these things perfectly all the time under normal conditions.

They performed the procedure under a local, so I was conscious for the whole thing. I was talking to the guy sitting at the main console, while the technician and the surgeon did the work at my shoulder. They place a small ‘tent’ around your head so you can’t see them.

I asked the young fella at the console what sort of voltage and current were we talking about here, and he said that no one had ever asked him that before.

It took about 10/12 minutes to set up, around 35 minutes to do the procedure, and then 10 minutes to finish up. There’s a huge monitor in the room, almost wall sized, and that has around six or so screens on it and one of them is a ‘Live action’ X Ray, which I was directed to look at after it was all over, and you can see the pacemaker, the two wires in their positions and it’s jumping about a little, and that’s the heart beating.

The specialist, right at the start of all this, the one who sent me off for this, was a little impressed that I could follow his explanation of the ECG, which is just a series of waveforms, 13 of them in all, and he was showing me, and explaining them in laymans terms, and I could understand exactly what he was on about. I mentioned that it was just like fault diagnosis on an electrical circuit, and looking at the (similar) waveforms. I could see the small ‘firing’ signals, and where they were missing at the bottom of the heart and slowing at the top of the heart.

You think that a heart problem is something that will fill you with fear, and ‘strike you dumb’, but it was all such a learning experience, the whole thing, that I never had time for any fear at all. That made me take stock, because I thought that if something like that did happen to me, it would be the ‘end of the world’, and it was nothing like that at all. It’s an amazing thing how the body copes with something like this.

To answer you question the “standard” pulse delivered by a pacemaker when I worked on them was 5V, square wave with a 0.5mS pulse width, in a unipolar system the case of the pulse generator (titanium) is positive (anode). Once the system was installed and stabilised the pulse voltage and possibly pulse width would be reduced as much as possible, as long as it was above the “pacing threshold” (minimum amount of stimulation to cause a contraction) in order to maximise battery life. The pacing threshold would be influenced by tissue impedance and the interface between the pacing tip and the tissue and would depend on how much fibrous tissue the body would build around the tip. When the battery nears depletion after 5 to 15 years, the pulse generator unit is replaced but the lead is left in place (usually) and reattached to the new unit. There are adapter cables to enable different brands of pulse generators and leads to be mated together. Australia was once a world leader in pacemaker technology under the leadership of Paul Trainor and his Telectronics company (the company became defunct not ling after its purchase by Pacific Dunlop after which their accountants sermed to make the business decisions…). Telectronics pacemakers even used custom integrated circuits made in Australia by AWA. I wrote an article in Silicon Chip magazine on medical implants including pacemakers in the October 2016 issue.

Watching their ABC New tonight. They seemed to be having real trouble filling up the time.

Its hard to beleive there isnt enough going on in the world to have to resort to a personalised history story about the Berlin Wall (in what universe is that news???) and then to follow up a fluff piece on bistros closing in Paris (news?????)

The did another fluff piece on the marginal electorate of Dunkley (Frankston) which when it came down to it was just he said/she said regurgitated talking points from the candidates, and meaningless context free snippets from random residents.

We also got a very detailed report of some basketball game in Adelaide. Not sure if their brains trust is on leave or it was just a very slow news day globally. The couldnt even dredge up a climate alarm story.

The story of Eric “Winkle” Brown is amazing. He finished flying with 487 aircraft types in his log book and the most carrier landings by any pilot, one of which was the first jet landing on a carrier. He must be Britain’s best pilot but was not an ace but did shoot down a couple of FW Condors early in the war.
Worth the time to watch:

He is currently in rehab at the Austin/Repat in Melbourne.
He is making a recovery, but he is confined to his ward unless Visitors take him for a wheel chair walk.

We went for a wheel chair walk yesterday, which was fun for both of us.
ROM will be reading this by now, because he is set up with a new I-Pad. However I think he is unlikely to ask for anything.

If there are JoNovians nearby and you feel like a stroll in the historic grounds of the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital, Melbourne, With ROM in the wheel chair contact Jo. She will give you my contact details or you might even contact ROM directly

I have been having a go at Peter Fitzroy
This one I missed!
Can you believe he actually says he compared standing rates?
He is a TOTAL LIAR!

All usage 11.94 cents per kWh 13.134 cents per kWh Daily supply charge 3.06 cents per day 3.366 cents per day Daily supply charge: a charge that applies for supplying electricity to your property for each day of the billing period, regardless of how much electricity you use. Red energy
I’ve compared standing rates

You just made this up!
ABSOLUTE LIES!

Peter, you are probably worse than Tim Flannery!
How about you apologise for these LIES

quite some time ago it was obvious that his contribution was to be that of Blogg Clogger.

Nothing has changed.

You won’t find a single contribution from BC that is genuine inquiry, truthful comment or anything useful to him or us.

The Only point in having him here on the blog is that it reminds us of the sad, socially entrained groupthink that passes for science today and to some extent keeps us in touch with the depths of human depravity which now controls and directs social and political activity in the Western FDs.

I’ve haven’t read any of his blog infill for many threads now after I questioned whether this permanent insult to the blog should be allowed to continue.

No doubt he has cemented his place in some watching SJW community somewhere, perhaps even the UWA.

Perhaps the mafias use of cement is too extreme but has he been here too long.

I posted the following by him one of jo’s earlier threads and feel it’s worth posting again as he wasn’t so shy about owning the Green New Deal before he went on Tucker’s program:

3 Feb: Financial Times: Pay for Green New Deal now or spend even more later
by Robert Hockett
(at bottom: The writer is a law and finance professor at Cornell Law School and advises Ms Ocasio-Cortez)
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s plan to halt climate change will be cheaper in the long run.
The new Democrats in the US Congress already have done something no American politician has managed for decades: to get people talking about massive — and massively transformative — public investment as a real prospect.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s plan for a Green New Deal to fight climate change envisions massive spending on carbon-free products, services and infrastructure. It would be larger than any other American government undertaking since Franklin D Roosevelt’s original New Deal and the US mobilisation for the second world war. This is true no matter which measure is used: real expenditure or expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product.

Ambition on such a scale always draws naysaying from the timid, the cynical and the economically uninformed, and this time has been no exception. Predictable expressions of scepticism have been accompanied by jibes of “how will you pay for it?”…

Green New Deal supporters recognise not only that we must act but also that going big here is actually to go more affordably too. That might seem counterintuitive but there are three reasons why this makes sense.

Firstly, there are economies of scale: like all productive activities, climate mitigation occasions both fixed costs and variable costs. Fixed costs tend to diminish proportionally as the scale of activity rises, reducing average cost per unit, at least until the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Where climate mitigation is concerned, the scale of the threat that we face is so monstrous that we are unlikely to run into that threshold for many years to come.

A bigger Green New Deal would also will be more affordable in the long run because of what is known as the snowball effect. The pace of climate change will accelerate as early harms damage the environment’s capacity to compensate for later ones. This leads to accelerating costs and negative feedback. As a consequence, it is clear that acting faster will yield greater impact than acting sluggishly. And acting faster here means spending more now rather than later…

Supporters of Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s plans understand that spending will be absorbed without causing inflation if we ramp up production and installation of everything from solar panels and batteries to new plants and “smart” power grids…
When you are fighting for your very survival, you do not pinch pennies. That would be false economy. In this case it would also be suicide.https://www.ft.com/content/046e7c30-23c8-11e9-b20d-5376ca5216eb

9 Feb: CNBC: Reuters: Tesla’s delivery team said to be gutted in recent job cuts
•The cuts could fuel investor worries that demand for the Model 3 in the United States has tailed off after a large tax break for consumers expired last year and the car remains too expensive for most consumers.
•”There are not enough deliveries,” one of the former employees told Reuters. “You don’t need a team because there are not that many cars coming through.”
Some 150 employees out of a team of about 230 were let go in January at the Las Vegas facility that gets tens of thousands of Model 3s into the hands of U.S. and Canadian buyers, they said, in a sign the company expected the pace of deliveries to significantly slow in the near term.

The cuts, which have not been previously reported, could fuel investor worries that demand for the Model 3 in the United States has tailed off after a large tax break for consumers expired last year and the car remains too expensive for most consumers…
“There are not enough deliveries,” one of the former employees told Reuters. “You don’t need a team because there are not that many cars coming through.”…READ ONhttps://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/09/teslas-model-3-worries-delivery-employees-said-to-be-cut.html

for the headline:

9 Feb: WSLS: Seattle almost reached its yearly amount of snowfall in a day
State of emergency declared
CNN’S CHRIS BOYETTE CONTRIBUTED TO THIS REPORT
Temperatures are expected to remain below freezing until Monday afternoon, CNN’s Brink said, with the forecast high expected to hit 35 degrees F.
Seattle’s average high at this time of year is 49 degrees, Brink said.
Those temperatures, combined with the wind, could make it feel like it’s in the teens Saturday across the Seattle region…

Ruined? Surely not. What do you get when you match hills and snow? Especially in a country renowned for its
entrepreneurial flair. and just when the world was running out of new sites for its Winter Olympics.

10 Feb: Daily Mail: Countdown star Rachel Riley joins Labour rebels to plot a ‘Blairite’ party and calls for JK Rowling to be its leader was greeted with applause at secret meeting of supporters
•Rachel Riley teams up with former Blair government advisers to form new party
•A secret meeting was held in London on plans for a pro-European centrist party
•The organisers emphasised the need for a charismatic party leader to succeed
•Tony Blair’s former Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell and former Blair speechwriter Philip Collins told guests that they aim to launch the party later this year
By Ben Lazarus
The secret meeting on Tuesday night was held in the Central London offices of Ms Rowling’s agent, Neil Blair, where Powell and former Blair speechwriter Philip Collins delivered plans for a new pro-European centrist party…

8 Feb: Bloomberg: How the Green New Deal Almost Went Nuclear on Its First Day
By Ari Natter and Jennifer A Dlouhy
A fact sheet distributed by the office of progressive newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic representative from New York, said there was no room in the nation’s all renewable-energy future for nuclear plants.
But the reference caught many off guard and back-peddling ensued.

Giselle Barry, a spokeswoman for Senator Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who is the Green New Deal’s lead Senate backer, disowned the fact sheet and said Markey’s office wasn’t consulted before it was sent out. “We did not draft that fact sheet,” she said.
The stumble irked potential supporters…

Markey sought to do damage control at a midday press conference, emphasizing the proposed resolution doesn’t address specific energy technologies. Language on nuclear power “is not part of this legislation,” he said. “The resolution is silent on any individual technology that can move us to a solution.”…

But nuclear power provides more than 50 percent of the country’s carbon-free electricity, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group that represents companies such as Westinghouse Electric Co. and Exelon Corp.

“Any approach to eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions requires all clean energy technologies, including nuclear, to work together to address that urgent problem,” Maria Korsnick, the group’s president said in a statement issued after the Green New Deal was unveiled.
Thursday’s kerfuffle over nuclear might just be a taste of things to come.
“These are ideological documents — not legislative blueprints,” said Paul Bledsoe, strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute. It will get even tougher “when you actually have to create legislative language.”https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/how-the-green-new-deal-almost-went-nuclear-on-its-first-day

8 Feb: Forbes: The Only Green New Deals That Have Ever Worked Were Done With Nuclear, Not Renewables
by Michael Shellenberger
Three weeks ago, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said, “The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”
Then, yesterday, she proposed a “transition from” nuclear power, America’s largest source of emissions-free energy.

8 Feb: Reuters: Macron says France to decide on new nuclear reactors around 2022
by Jean-Baptiste Vey
In November, Macron said France would reduce the share of nuclear in the power mix to 50 percent by 2035, down from 75 percent today, and said that a decision on whether to build new nuclear plants would be taken mid-2021…

Cortez obviously believes in a very responsive global climate that is driven solely by what happens in the US (which is already leading the world in reduction of emitting the dastardly CO2 molecule)

While she states that the world is ending in 12 years, she then follows up with a 10 year plan (from a standing start) to plunge the US back to the 1800s somewhere, and she clearly believes that if 100% implementated the global climate will stop doing whatever she thinks its doing in 2 years and all will be well in unicorn land.

Rarely has a single package of stupidity, delusion and hubris been offered up to us common folk.

That’ll be “back pedalling”, slowing down; “back peddling” could perhaps be selling knockoffs at the rear of the factory, I dunno, but the term has become an increasingly frequent solecism as society becomes damnably more illiterated.

8 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: France tables 2050 carbon-neutral law
New bill loosens restrictions on nuclear to bring France’s emissions down, concerning some campaigners
By Natalie Sauer and Karl Mathiesen
The changes would expand the role of nuclear energy and drop concrete emissions targets for the middle of the century, raising concerns among environmentalists…

A proposal was sent to the economic, social and environmental council on 7 February. A copy was published by environment news site Reporterre (LINK IN FRENCH PDF).

If the bill is adopted, France would…ETC

Some green groups attacked the carbon neutral language as too vague, when compared to concrete cuts. Yves Maringnac, who leads the anti-nuclear World Information Service on Energy, tweeted that the lack of a concrete target for emissions cuts left “the door open for less reduction and more ‘compensation’”. He said the law should include both a hard target for emissions and a neutral goal…READ ONhttps://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/02/08/france-proposes-2050-carbon-neutral-law/

6 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Russia reviews ratification of Paris Agreement
A report on formally joining the climate deal is due for completion by the end of the month, while a key industry lobby has reversed its opposition
By Natalie Sauer
Russia, one of the world’s highest-polluting hold-outs, has taken steps that could lead to ratification of the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile a key business group reversed its opposition.

Late last year, the country’s lead climate advisor Ruslan Edelgeriev released a statement (LINK IN RUSSIAN) flagging the preparation of a key report on the pros and cons of ratification.
In January, business daily Kommersant (LINK IN RUSSIAN) reported that Edelgeriev had asked a working group of government experts to have the report ready by the end of February, with a view of landing the document on Vladimir Putin’s desk by March…

The government would then be in a position to submit ratification legislation to the country’s two parliamentary chambers, the Duma and Federation Council.
The move coincided with a shift from a key business group that had previously called for Russia to move slowly on its ratification of the deal.

In a letter to the environment ministry on 17 January, Alexander Shokhin, the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), wrote that “Russian producers are interested in ratification” as “the absence of national obligations and state regulation of activities to combat climate change may serve as a pretext for imposing economic restrictions on Russian companies”. Shokhin also cited concerns over a loss of competitiveness and unnecessary costs.

The European Commission indicated last year it would prioritise countries in trade negotiations that had backed the Paris deal. Accordingly, the Japan-EU agreement concluded in 2017 contained a chapter explicitly referring to the ratification and implementation of the Paris deal.
Neither the RSPP nor a spokesperson for the EU responded to a request for comment…

Alexey Kokorin, a climate change officer from WWF Russia, said he believed Russia’s new climate representative Edelgeriev was providing an impetus that could see the government follow through with the process…
But Kokorin warned that the ratification had yet to pass a legislative ring of fire.
Deputies “will resist it as much as possible using this to demonstrate themselves as Russian patriots. The populists of United Russia [Vladimir Putin’s party] will certainly delay the process to prove themselves”, he said.

There may also be resistance from within the government. A representative from the ministry of science was the only official to oppose the ratification during the working group, reported Kommersant, citing a lack of evidence for man-made climate change.

Trump warned them about becoming captives of Russian gas at the same time he demanded they take seriously their two percent of GDP NATO contributions; the EU has not understood the extent to which it is actually in crisis and once the UK is out the situation won’t improve.

The submission in 2013 had the following words prominently displayed on the front cover:
“South-Eastern Australia needs to prepare for hot dry conditions in the summer of 2019 and possible extensive flooding in 2029”

My submission was totally ignored by the committee.

When will BOM start listening to alternative voices on climate change?